Monday 21st April 2025, 5.55pm (day 4,988)
There’s no other word that could possibly describe this so aptly. The blossoms everywhere seem to be doing very well this year and pink, they certainly are.
Pink!
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Tag Archives: cherry blossom
The first blossom (and Turing)
Wednesday 14th February 2024, 3.25pm (day 4,556)
Definitely the first full cherry blossom sighting of the year, sprouting in the nicely sheltered urban heat reservoir that is Sackville Gardens, Manchester. Dr. Turing’s statue looks rather content to be there, as it usually does.
Sackville Street Gardens, Manchester
Friday 17th February 2023, 2.00pm (day 4,194)
Chosen as much because this was the year’s first outbreak of cherry blossom — at least, in my sight. The position of the photographer on this shot was carefully chosen — Alan Turing’s statue is visible, the litter bin is artfully concealed.
Evening blossom
Sunday 17th April 2022, 8.35pm (day 3,888)
The cherry blossom in the courtyard at work had been and gone six weeks ago, but the more exposed trees outside the White Lion in Hebden Bridge require more lead-in time to reach full flower. Still, here they are — in time to make the place look good for the Easter daytrippers.
The first blossom
Friday 11th February 2022, 10.40am (day 3,823)
Somewhat continuing a theme from yesterday, but hey. Definitively, the first blossom I’ve seen of the year turns up in the courtyard of the Ellen Wilkinson Building, as it has done before (it’s a finely sheltered spot).
Blossoming, unseen
Wednesday 24th March 2021, 1.30pm (day 3,499)
There may be a few people, other than me, working in the Ellen Wilkinson Building at this time. There are occasional noises, dimly perceived, as if made by spirits. Shadowy presences in stairwells. But seeing as even in normal times I was usually the only one who ventured out into the hidden courtyard, the annual cherry blossom display is even more personal than usual, this year. We both greeted a warm, early spring day — alone.
Sakura
Wednesday 15th April 2020, 9.30am (day 3,156)
It is three years and a bit, or more precisely, 1,112 days, since I went to Japan and commented on that nation’s obsessive interest in cherry blossom, which they call sakura. It is certainly a sign of full spring, and so ephemeral that I wonder if the Japanese are getting their spiritual money’s worth from the sakura in this rather odd springtime. I will at least report that Hebden’s own cherry/cheery trees are in full blossom right now.
A ceiling of blossom
Thursday 25th April 2019, 10.25am (day 2,800)
The blossom came out in force over the hot Easter weekend…. and a good chunk of it came down again during the last couple of less clement days. This ephemerality is why people like the Japanese get all sentimental about it, I guess.
This year’s courtyard blossom
Thursday 21st March 2019, 11.00am (day 2,765)
Last day in Manchester, certainly, for 33 days. Off tomorrow, on my most significant journey of 2019. So time for this year’s ‘cherry blossom in the Ellen Wilkinson Building’s secret courtyard’, then. I doubt it’ll still be there when I get back.
Fallen blossoms
Friday 11th May 2018, 8.30am (day 2,451)
They’re very pink, but very ephemeral, the cherry blossoms. Maybe that’s why the Japanese like them so much, it matches their general aesthetic.
Being 42 